The soul identity of an individual is found in the 4th house. It consists of an upheld connection to the soul’s origin in the 12th house from where its principle originated, and of the milieu it is born into. This milieu again shows two facets. One is the reality of landscape, climate, people and family, one is born into. The second source for this milieu of the 4th lies in the 8th house and prepares the individual on a level of emotion and feeling for this context of reality. The 8th house provides genetically the inherited images of experience, from the whole of evolution up to the images of experiences of the species of mankind, to the images of experiences of a people, and to the images of experiences of the personal ancestors, the clan and the individuals of this clan.

These images of experience contain therefore everything needed to relate to the milieu one is born into. The 4th is the stage for the personal inheritance of the soul and for the context one is born into. This context includes the features of landscape, climate and mentality and general make up of the people living in the region. That is why the 4th also represents the soul identity of a people. The Moon is among other things the natural significator for the people. (If you have in an event chart Moon in the 3rd, you may assume, there are lots of people (Mo) in the street (3rd).)

So, the 4th as a significator for a people’s felt identity is the home of what we call love of fatherland. It is a natural feeling of being embedded, which lies “in the blood” – or as one would say today, in the genetic make-up. Therefore it is deep and irrational in the best sense. In a native chart it will be more or less dominating according to the astrological context and strength of Moon and the 4th.

If a region is occupied by a foreign people and culture, this deep lying source of identity is seriously attacked and endangered. The following struggle and its results differ enormously: assimilation of the occupied or the occupier, throwing out of the occupier, dangerous equilibrium of two separate societies for a given time, flight of the occupied. One will certainly find examples in history for any variant one can think of.

LOVE OF FATHERLAND AS OPPOSED TO PATRIOTISM/NATIONALISM

Love of fatherland is a healthy and natural expression of the 4th.
Patriotism and nationalism are compensatory functions that come into play, when the felt identity of a people is disturbed and no longer present to the degree, which would be needed for the individual’s feeling of “soul-context-identity” as described above. It is the compensation of an identity weakness.

This weakness results from a loss of gestalt concerning the entity of a people.

Naturally, living “kingdoms” with a healthy feeling of identity are pretty small. If these natural unities are replaced by states, nations, empires, the feeling of identity gets lost and has to be replaced and compensated by patriotism/nationalism.

Empires are not in accordance with any kind of gestalt. They are an artificial Jupiter-Pluto construct of unities with built-in essential incompatibilities of Saturn-Uranus. They bear their being doomed within themselves from the day of birth. Their breaking apart is destined and only a question of time.

All empires broke apart and will break apart in future times, just as did Alexander the Great’s Empire, the Roman Empire, the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation, Napoleon’s Empire, The Austrian-Hungarian Empire, Great Britain’s Empire, Hitler-Germany’s “Empire” (3rd Reich), Japan’s short-lived colonial Empire, the Soviet Empire, to name only a few from my very limited knowledge of history.

The way back to healthy small kingdoms, autonomous in identity and reality is probably no longer open, even though there is undeniably a widespread, sometimes violent, sometimes peaceful tendency towards separatism, which is the inevitable result of the above stated incompatibilities.

So we shall have to live with what we have. Globalisation will already guarantee that no small healthy kingdoms will have a chance to exist…

But as always, it would help to be aware of the forces at work, so deeply affecting our societies.

This leads me to the subject of

CRITICISM

I do not think that criticism of state policy, leadership or certain traits of national character can be equalled to a lack of love for the fatherland.
Quite to the contrary. It takes courage, love and a deeply caring attitude.

F. neither needs my support, nor will he appreciate it ;)
But, a radical lover of truth myself, I feel compelled to state that someone who loves his mother tongue as he does, must love his fatherland and people profoundly and dearly, as language is the purest expression of a people’s essence.

Moreover, to tell the truth at all costs whatsoever is a feature of Saturn-Pluto.
If it is combined with Mars-Pluto (or a Ma-Pl degree like 2 Sagittarius or 28 Cancer in decisive position) it usually leads to being haunted and chased after by the herd.

I know that energy when I meet it, without needing any chart.

One of my favourite writers is Thomas Bernhard. He became most famous for his plays, but I love him for his novels. He has Saturn-Pluto (plus the sharp tongue of Mercury-Mars) and told the truth about his native country Austria. In his very precise and subtle descriptions he mercilessly pulled the friendly cultivated mask from the faces of all bigot carriers of national pride, revealing falsehood, bigotry and inhumane cruelty in all those pillars of society who in reality destroy everything of any true value. (He used however the same accuracy and careful elaborateness in painting the images of decent authentic people.) In doing this, he never stopped short of critical self-description, another characteristic trait of Saturn-Pluto. He was pursued all his life, was accused to foul his own nest, to denigrate his country. But all officials were very quick in partaking in his international success and fame, claiming him as a son of his proud fatherland. Absolutely disgusting.

The same thing happened to the winner of the 2004 Nobel Prize for literature, Elfriede Jelinek. When I saw a 3-minute interview with her, I immediately said, she has Saturn-Pluto, probably also Mars-Pluto. When I looked up her data, it was confirmed. She is an extremely shy, fragile and vulnerable person with yet deadly courage to expose truth. She also got extremely run down in Austria as being a denigrator of her home country, by state officials and “art officials”. When she won the Nobel Prize, they were again very quick to acclaim patronage of her work and art. She did not even go to Stockholm to receive the prize personally…